The Junk Drawer

Come on everyone! Feast your eyes on my junk drawer. (No - not nearly as nifty and organized as the Lowe's number above)  It's the little one to the left of my stove; I'm sure you can't miss it.  I'm pretty certain it was earmarked as the "junk drawer" within the first few days Peter and I moved into the condo.  It started with a few thumb tacks and screws - things that didn't quite have a place yet, in our new place.  From there all hell seemed to break loose in our special drawer.  Matter of fact, I am ashamed to say I can't open the thing without first pressing my hand down on an outdated address book,  hoping things don't shift behind the drawer and spill out on to the array of cereal boxes below.  The amount of crap that has accumulated over the past three years is mind boggling.  20 Chucky Cheese tickets "for when we go back", several dead batteries, a black electric cord that powers something, 2 dead cell phones, scotch tape (who doesn't keep tape in the junk drawer?), a few paperclips, pencils, cap-less crayola markers, the outdated address book, a few curled up photos, and a bunch of rusty pennies.  When I open the drawer (usually to add more junk)  I begin to understand just a little, what it must be like to be a certified "hoarder".  No, it's not stacks of unread newspapers or pizza boxes, nor piles of clothes with tags still on them,  but useless junk that I can't bare to part with because "what if".  What if we go back to Chucky Cheese and I need those 20 tickets?  What if the TV remote shits the bed in the middle of "The Big Bang Theory" and I don't have even a dead spare battery to try out?  What if we find the waffle maker or table saw that fits that ugly black powercord?  (just kidding about the tablesaw) but after all this time, how dare I even suggest purging the drawer of its contents given the unpredictable nature of day to day life?  Isn't that why everyone I know and don't - have junk drawers in the kitchen?